We are up against 20 years of planning

7 July 2007

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Saira Khan recalls the moment she met relatives in the hijab for the first time and one of them told her: ‘We are not British, we are Muslim

That summer two relatives of my mum’s — girls of my own age — came to stay with us, as they had done often in the past. Like me, they were in their first year at university, but they had changed completely. To my horror, the girls I’d known so well — who were fun, happy, easy-going — arrived at our house wearing hijabs. I’d never seen them dressed like that before, and it was totally alien to me — and to my family and to mainstream Pakistani culture. The two girls I’d know for years, who used to talk about boys, clothes, fashion, music and films, were now wearing Middle Eastern outfits and claiming that this was their new religious identity and it was the true way to dress for any woman claiming to be Muslim.

They told me that they had joined an Islamic group at their university and that there would be daily lectures about Islam. They said that most of these lecturers were from the Middle East. Their key message was that they had to create an Islamic State, which meant that Muslims from all over the world had to unite. These people believed — and believe — that there is no Islamic state and therefore one must be created where all Muslims can live according to the true laws of Islam.

One of girls told me that the ways her parents had brought her up as a Muslim was not the true way and that her parents were misguided and she was trying to educate them through what she had learnt from her Islamic group at university. ‘People like you, Saira, are not Muslims because you are confused with religion and culture,’ she said. ‘There is no culture, there is only religion, and until you accept that you cannot call yourself a Muslim.’ She went on to state, ‘We are not British, we are Muslim.’

My two former companions were extremely well-rehearsed in presenting their arguments. To support a certain line of debate they would recite chapter and verse from the Koran. It’s impossible to argue with someone whose get-out clause is always, ‘It is written in the Koran. We can’t argue with God’s Word.’ The sad thing was that these girls had worked so hard to get to university to study medicine and enable themselves to get a great job. Their mother was just as shocked as I was at their transformation, and at the way they spoke and despised Britain so much. As she put it, ‘I sent them to university to study and become doctors and they’ve come back telling me that I’m not a proper Muslim and that I need to wear a hijab.’ Back then, however, nobody really seemed to take much notice of this very obvious transformation and change in attitude in these two young women.

My point here is not to say that women who wear the hijab are extremists — far less that they will at some stage be involved in some terrorist activity — but to suggest that this is how, in many cases, extremism starts.